


Fate/frozen flow

by Levander



Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Finland (Country), Finnish Magic, Finnish Mythology & Folklore, Gen, Holy Grail War (Fate), Kalevala, Original Character-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-02-01 02:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21345100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Levander/pseuds/Levander
Summary: Aragata Risu, 20, spends much of her free time discussing the traits and metagame of hypothetical Grail Wars, thought to be a thing of the past. When the chance to actually participate in one arrives on her doorstep, however, she has no choice but to take it. Her ambition takes her halfway across the world to fight other mages to the death armed only with her own magecraft, sharp eyes, wits, and a partner who may turn out to be less than reliable.
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story is designed to (hopefully) work even without being overly familiar with Finnish mythology, much like Fate in general. The important parts should reveal themselves over time.

Outside the cabin, a cold wind was howling, slowly piling up snow against the windows. Risu peeked out through the curtains one last time before picking up her handheld mirror and starting to rhythmically swipe her fingers across its surface. It seemed that neither her eyes nor her web of familiars could sense anything but dark, empty forest for miles around. Judging from the steady glow and hum of the lens hanging on her neck, the ambient mana was ideal as well – whether that was connected to the sudden change in weather, she couldn’t tell, but it didn’t really matter. Satisfied, she returned to the cabin’s living room.  
In order to both set up and dispose of the summoning circle as quickly as possible, she’d drawn it ahead of time on a large white sheet that she now carefully spread across the floor, painstakingly evening out all the wrinkles. It wasn’t perfect, but neither would be drawing it free-handed on a wooden floor anyway. If anything, she felt like the instructions themselves were almost suspiciously sloppy compared to what she’d expect from any ritual of this scale. A beginner-level circle. Barely any materials. Supposedly not even the catalyst was mandatory, not that she had one anyway.  
Going through her mental checklist, she stared at the back of her hand. The Command Spells should appear as soon as the summoning was complete, but from everything she’d heard, it felt odd to approach such a heavy endeavor so empty-handed, literally and otherwise.  
Well. Worst case scenario, the whole thing was fake, she’d feel like a moron for a while, and get a little vacation instead.

“— From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by three great words of power. Come forth from the Ring of Restraint, Protector of the Holy Balance!”  
As Risu finished the incantation, there was an excruciating moment of silence before the circle finally sprung to life. Arcing energy filled the cabin, making the ceiling light flicker, her instruments clatter and clumps of snow tumble off the roof. She braced herself, but after only a few seconds of shaking, it was over as suddenly as it started. There was no angelic choir or the ground breaking open or anything. When she opened her eyes, on top of the lightly charred sheet stood the figure of a man more than a head taller than her. He was clad in leather and a partial suit of decorated chain-and-plate armor. His youthful face was framed by hair of fire and gold, and in his gray eyes was a piercing, measuring gaze. More than his face, though, Risu’s eyes were drawn downward: to the sword scabbard hanging at his hip, poking out from under his long fur cape.  
Before she could even ask, the man spread his arms wide and bellowed in a sing-songy voice: “You have summoned Lemminkäinen, Farmind, Ahti Saarelainen! Bequeath me your will and reason, so that your fate be my saber.”  
“You –”  
“Here I swear to fight your battles, share your struggles for the glory, rise and fall with your own story, that it find a sweet conclusion.”  
“…Are you done yet?”  
The man flashed an infuriating grin. “Pleasure to serve such a fair young maiden. You may call me Ahti.” He showed no sign of bowing or even offering to shake her hand, but at least he wasn’t trying to kiss it or anything.  
Risu sighed and crossed her arms. “Can't say I recognize the name, but I’ll be calling you Saber, thanks. Assuming that’s what you are?”  
Saber kept grinning and gave the scabbard on his hip a few meaningful pats.

Pieces of the summoning circle burnt happily in the fireplace. Saber lay sprawled across the couch, having propped up his sword on the floor and demanifested his armor, leaving him with a short-sleeved red tunic and leather pants. At Risu’s insistence, he’d also removed his boots. While he spun his toes in the air and whistled to himself, Risu sat cross-legged in an armchair and stared intently at her mirror. Still no activity in the area. Good. And as expected of a Saber, her new Servant’s abilities seemed quite outstanding – on paper, at least. From all she knew of the meta, it was generally considered the most optimal class, but there were also those who reveled in nitpicking and pointing out exceptions to that oft-repeated mantra. Whatever the case, it was certainly true that a good Servant of any given class could win against a poor Servant of another. She saw a few skills whose implications she didn’t fully understand, but one thing jumped out in particular.  
“’Boyish Bachelor’, huh… That one doesn’t sound very high-tier,” Risu muttered and looked at Saber. On some level, without his equipment he looked almost disappointingly normal. Yet his facial features and lustrous hair were such that whatever your actual preference, it was easy for anyone’s eyes to linger in a way liable to give the wrong impression, especially when the flickering light played across their surface like this. The faint trace of a stubble made his face look younger if anything, creating almost a bit of a mismatch against his powerful voice and the rest of his body. By her estimate, the somewhat ethereal end result looked anywhere from twenty to forty years old depending on how you squint. Ignoring the fact that he was an ageless Heroic Spirit, anyway. He noticed her staring and returned her attention with a glance, urging her to break the silence.  
“I must say, any sense of charisma dissipates the moment you open your mouth.”  
“Myriad maids beg to differ,” he chuckled and sat up straight, very deliberately spreading his well-toned arms on the back of the couch. The fact that he could also speak reasonably normal Japanese led Risu to assume that he’d just made the conscious decision to be obnoxious.  
Aragata Risu herself was a comparatively petite woman 20 years old, presently wearing a knitted beige sweater and black leggings under her skirt to cope with the climate. She tied her pale blue, almost waist-length hair in a long ponytail to keep it out of the way, not quite ready to commit to just cutting it shorter as she probably should. Her features were sharp, but her dark brown eyes best described as tired. A lot of the time, but especially now.  
“You’ll have to forgive me. I’m not too familiar with all the local legends,” she said and returned to her mirror. “But it’s good to see that this is in fact your homeland. I have the impression that’s supposed to make a Servant stronger. Really lucked out there, even.”  
“Homeland? Watch your tongue!” Saber raised his voice, more bombastic than angry. “I am no son of Pohjola, northern wilds of cold and darkness. My birthplace is Kalevala, verdant land of warmth and plenty. In the halls of Kaukoniemi, I was raised on fish and mutton –”  
“Right, right. My bad,” Risu continued browsing and tried to tune him out.  
It had been a bit over a month since that strange letter arrived at the Aragata residence. The thick envelope actually had no recipient written on it at all, leading her to wonder how exactly it found its way to her doorstep, and the Edelfelt seal just piqued her curiosity even further. They were a famous lineage, but not overly active in Japan, especially not with families like hers. Her parents weren’t home at the moment, but what if it was urgent? She’d maintained enough caution to check the package every way she could, but after finding no traces of magecraft or anything else, she’d finally decided to open it.  
She’d never imagined to find herself flying to some ski resort in Lapland to participate in a Holy Grail War of all things. In the over twenty years since the last one in Fuyuki and the supposed end of the whole system, there had developed a not insignificant community of young magi who spent their free time studying the history of the Grail Wars and debating the best way to win one. Yet that was mostly an intellectual exercise for fun and pedantry, not unlike some sort of fantasy football. Few of them even dreamed to see one in action, and so the mere hint of one was an opportunity she couldn’t pass by. Even if it meant traveling across the world to participate in a ritual deathmatch, apparently, one that ran on a first come, first served basis no less. The Command Spells in the shape of a prism-like triangle on her left hand were her only proof that she hadn’t just wasted her time and money on some weird scam, but they also marked the reality of the situation that was only starting to dawn on her.  
Those armchair Masters whose ramblings she followed usually didn’t put much weight on their hypothetical Servants’ personalities, either. That thought made her painfully aware that she was sitting in an armchair this very moment, trying to ignore Saber singing about his backstory just a few meters from her.  
His mouth was still running, but he’d started pacing around the room, clearly lost in his memories. Risu cleared her throat. “In any case. It’ll be easier for both of us if you obey my orders voluntarily. That way I can save the Command Spells for something more useful for the both of us.”  
Saber spun around to face her. “But of course, young lady! If you’re here to win this war and let me fight your battles, then I believe we’ll get along splendidly. Rather a coin from war than a fortune at home, I say! Although…” In a blink and a blur, the large man had already closed the distance between them and leaned menacingly over her seat. Risu flinched and cradled her mirror in reflex, but tried her best to stand her ground. “In return, I expect you to respect my wishes when they do come up. Right?”  
Risu nodded. Saber chuckled and backed off, lumbering over to the fireplace to helpfully throw in more scraps of the circle. She took a deep breath to calm herself down and not overreact. It was a fact of life that Servants were stronger than their Masters, but they also didn’t have anything to gain from harming each other.  
_ He’s just showing off. Asserting dominance, as they say,_ she told herself. _That’s obviously a hobby of his. _If showing off and liking his own voice a little too much were the worst of his flaws, she could handle him just fine. Their goals really were the same, after all. She understood the theory of a Grail War better than well enough to stay focused on the big picture.  
“You said to call you Ahti, but the name I see here is… uh… _Reminkainen_…?”  
“A beloved child has many names.”  
“Okay, sure. But I’d appreciate if you didn’t throw them around so lightly. We don’t want to –”  
“Ah, but you seem to be forgetting something. If I don’t introduce myself, then how should I grow in valor? How will my foes know who felled them, who to give their vows of vengeance?”  
“We don’t _want_ vows of vengeance!” Risu sprung up from her seat. The child with many names leaned on a windowsill. “Let me make myself clear. If we both want to win the war, we can’t get distracted by stuff like that. We have no idea who’s going to be on the other side, or even how many of them have been summoned yet. We could be the first, or there could be six other Masters waiting for us already. We have to keep whatever secrets we can.”  
“Good! About time my blade was sated! It’s gone unwetted for ages!”  
“Get your blade wet somewhere else,” Risu grumbled. She rubbed her temples and tried to get back to work. The least she could do was research her own Servant before someone else did it for her. That Servant, for his part, was mostly peeking out the windows like a kid waiting for Santa.

Santa didn’t come, nor did any enemies, but Risu still didn’t sleep well. She’d convinced herself that Saber was no threat to her, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t do something stupid while she was asleep. She couldn’t feel his presence in the bedroom, which probably was a good thing, but it also meant that he could be running off God knows where to look for a fight. A fight… As she drifted off to sleep, her mind kept wandering to all kinds of places. The war was just getting started.  
At least the cabin’s coffee maker came in handy in the morning. To his credit, Saber didn’t run off either. He even had the decency to wait until she’d gotten dressed before bursting into the room, raring to go. To his disappointment, there wasn’t much anything to go _to_. As Risu had to explain to him, _again_, they didn’t know if there were any other Masters yet, who they were, or where they were, so the best they could do was walk around and check out the area. Risu would’ve been perfectly content just sending out her familiars, but Saber’s impatience aside, it was true that they had their limitations. Risu put on her thick winter coat, but macho man that he was, Saber couldn’t be bothered to wear anything over his tunic. Of course, it made sense that he wouldn’t feel the cold, but the way he put it made Risu roll her eyes anyway.  
It was early December. Sariola Ski Center wasn’t quite in season yet. Last night’s snowfall, although heavy, had been some of the first of the year. Located near a small village of the same name, the resort itself included a central hotel and a lot of cabins scattered across the surrounding countryside. Over a hundred kilometers from the nearest real town, it seemed like a rather ideal battlefield already, but as the history of Grail Wars led one to assume, the letter had said that the real reason was the confluence of leylines in the area. Apparently they were especially active at the moment, allowing for this unusual war to be possible in the first place.  
Risu had flown in to the nearest airport and rented a car which was now sitting outside the cabin, but today she and Saber set off on foot. The cabin itself was quite a way from the main slopes, making it both cheap and convenient, as well as surrounded by forest and fells on all sides. The weather had cleared since last night, showering the snow with sunlight and making the whole landscape glow a blinding white. Saber seemed to enjoy just being out and about, but while Risu could certainly see the environment’s appeal as a tourist trap, she was too busy thinking about its practical side to fully appreciate the aesthetics. After a while, they were forced to wander off the beaten path to set up her wards in the woods. Saber watched curiously as Risu crouched under tree after tree to embed them with little glass crystals, trying to figure out an optimal height where they wouldn’t get covered by more snow.  
“Come to think of it,” Risu huffed as she pushed herself standing once again, “apparently you know something called Rune Singing. Can you set up some runes for me?”  
“What part of ‘Singing’ don’t you understand, woman?” Saber replied. “Ask me of the births of iron, the paths of the land of the dead.”  
Risu sighed and continued towards the next ward-tree. “I’ll take that as a no. Suppose that was too good to be true for a Saber.”  
“Young lady, you wound me! Not for naught was Lemm–”  
“Shush!”  
“…Not for naught was I the greatest hero and rune singer of my age. My sage knowledge was unrivaled, as was the voice that wielded it.”  
“So can you help or not?”  
“…No, I can not ‘set some up’ for you.”  
“Then shut up.”  
Even ignoring Saber’s superhuman strength, it was clear in comparison that Risu was no hiker, nor really an outdoors person in general. He got some cruel amusement from watching the much shorter young lady clamber and slip over logs and other terrain, but any offer of help was answered with an increasingly frustrated glare on her part. Whether as mockery or as spiritual support, he at least walked behind her the whole time instead of dematerializing as he could have.

Finally, after what felt like hours of walking (for her), they completed their trek to create a gapless perimeter around the cabin. Risu all but collapsed in the shadow of a large boulder, sitting on the ground and groaning in exhaustion. Saber, neglecting to hide his grin, sat down next to her.  
“You know, this really wasn’t what I expected,” he chuckled.  
“What? Obviously we need to get the defenses ready as soon as possible. It’s no use doing it _after_ we get ambushed,” Risu said, idly drawing circles in the snow with her finger.  
“Ah, but that’s the thing. First off, if someone really was man enough to take the initiative, I’d be more than happy to give them a warm welcome. One down, five to go. Second off… do you plan to just sit around inside this barrier of yours? Not that you don’t seem better suited for that kind of thing.”  
Risu groaned some more but was too tired to even acknowledge the jab. Was this what a Servant was supposed to be like? “No, but it’s at least good to have some sort of safe haven. I’m going to be working on more spells to make the cabin as secure as possible. In a fight between magi, the defender has the advantage, and it might be weeks before anyone even shows up. Better use that time to prepare.”  
“Well, well, well… Maybe it really would be better for the lady to stay at home and let me handle the hard work.”  
For the first time in a while, Risu’s eyes widened in actual surprise. “Oh! Wow! So much for knowing cultural norms, I guess.”  
Saber leaned back and bellowed with laughter. Risu could tell, though, that it wasn’t necessarily a mocking sort but actual honest amusement. Whether that was really better or not. She tried her best to just ignore him and move on with the conversation. “What I set up so far isn’t really a barrier per se, but it’ll detect any intrusion and give us vision of anywhere I put my wards. That should give us some idea of who’s coming. That’s when you get to do your fighting.”  
  
“Oh, that’s good. Wouldn’t wanna get snuck up on.”  
  
The relaxed mood vanished in a split second as a third voice entered the conversation. In all the time it took for Risu to fall over in surprise, Saber had leapt to his feet, summoned his blade and turned around to swing it at the intruder in one seamless motion, only to hit nothing but the boulder they’d been resting under. With a thunderous crack, the rock was split almost in two and the pressure blew a massive plume of snow into the air. The intended target, on the other hand, merely took a step to the right and let the wind ruffle his hair without so much as a twitch on his face.  
Said face wasn’t necessarily so much smug as smiling politely, but given the situation, that was the only way to take it. It belonged to a 30-something man with cold gray eyes not unlike Saber’s, and a short sandy-blonde combover. He was wearing an open gray wool jacket, and before Saber had time to strike again, his hand moved in a blur to pull something out of his breast pocket. Saber found himself staring down the barrel of a vintage pistol – a shape that he only vaguely recognized as a weapon, but someone more familiar with guns might’ve placed somewhere in the early 20th century.  
As the two men were frozen in their stand-off, Risu clambered backwards on the ground and stuttered: “No, wait, that’s a…!” before cutting herself short. To the naked eye it very much looked like Saber was fighting just a regular person, but the way he moved made her reconsider. She shook the fog out of her head and, with trembling fingers, pulled out her pendant to look at the man through the lens. No doubt about it. It was faint, but there was magical energy streaming into him.  
“Oh, sorry. Did I surprise you?” he asked in a jovial tone.  
“Put that hunk of iron away and draw your blade,” Saber scoffed. “I wouldn’t want first blood to come from a man who’s basically unarmed. I’ve yet to murder a peasant, and I don’t plan on starting now.”  
“Haha! I’m not sure my little knife would be much better against one like yours,” he quipped and looked at the sword still halfway stuck in the rock, making Risu do the same for the first time. It was a long, straight blade most suited for two hands, mostly unadorned but polished to a mirror finish. The hilt and crossguard shone with a vaguely golden sheen. Risu was embarrassed to find herself thinking that it looked more like an ornamental museum piece.  
“Then stop playing and show me your mettle, little goblin!”  
“He’s a Servant!” Risu interjected.  
“Yes, I can see that!” Saber growled and glanced back at her. That opening was all it took for the wool jacketed man to aim his pistol downwards and fire three rapid shots into Saber’s left thigh. He yelled in pain and surprise and fell onto one knee, clumsily swinging his sword and destroying most of what was left of the boulder. By then, however, the man had already moved out of the way and put a safe distance between them.  
“Sorry for the misunderstanding. I didn’t come here to fight,” he said, putting his pistol away, “just to say hello. My friends will be pleased to see this war might not be a total sham after all. I’m sure we’ll fight on more equal terms on a better day. Well. Maybe not you and me personally.” He hopped behind a mound and vanished from sight.  
“I’ll shove that smile back down your throat…!” Saber wasted no time in getting back onto his injured leg and trying to give chase, only to find Risu latched onto his arm. It wouldn’t have physically stopped him, but gave him pause nonetheless. Long enough to look at her. Then the bullet holes in his thigh. Then her again a bit more angrily.  
She forced a sheepish smile. “…So much for first blood, huh?”

Risu sat slumped over the table in the cabin kitchen, tapping her foot in frustration. “How did he get through the wards? Was he already inside?”  
“I would’ve spotted him,” Saber said, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. His playful attitude had taken a turn for the crankier since the encounter in the woods. At least, ‘cranky’ was the best way Risu could describe his tone entirely unfitting of a Heroic Spirit. “Are you sure your spells actually work?”  
“Of course they do! Even against Servants… they should…”  
“And an Assassin?”  
“…So you agree that’s who that was?”  
“Sneaking up, lightly grazing me and running away like a coward. Sure sounds like it to me.”  
The holes in Saber’s thigh had healed by now, as had actually those in his pant leg, seeing as it was part of his spiritual body. Risu had checked that there was no curse or poison or anything, even after Saber already told her as much. He was right that the attacker hadn’t even tried to cause real damage, just walked up to them and then ran off. That is to say, he’d probably been spying on them. Although, he’d gotten incredibly close, only to reveal himself for some reason…  
Saber interrupted her thinking: “That guy was a pushover in a real fight. I would’ve had him if you didn’t interrupt me.”  
“He had a gun aimed at your face! Do you even know what that is?”  
“A clumsy weapon for a less civilized age. All craft and no craftsmanship. No match for a blade of fire and blood.”  
Yes, that was another issue. Of course, the only reason a mere pistol could harm Saber at all was because it was wielded by another Servant, but she’d read somewhere that there shouldn’t be many from that sort of era to begin with. “It could’ve been a different Servant with a different weapon in disguise. An Assassin could pull that off, right? We’re dealing with Heroic Spirits here. You can’t just assume –”  
“You think you know better than me!?” Saber roared out of nowhere and slammed his hands on the table. The whole room seemed to rattle with the impact. “I have fought wars! I have bested hundreds! A whole nation sings my legend! And not once! In his life or after! Has Ahti Saarelainen lost a duel!”  
Risu recoiled backwards. She tried to open her mouth, but Saber didn’t give her the chance. He just got even closer and shoved his finger in her face.  
“Listen here, missy. The whole master planner act is real cute and all, and I can appreciate you as a witch...”  
“Magus!”  
“I’m a witch too, take it as praise. But do not think you know more about war than I do just because you read it in a book! You’re my Master, not my teacher! I’m a Heroic Spirit summoned by the Grail! And the reason I’m a Heroic Spirit is because I’m a _hero!_”  
“Listen…!”  
The rage in Saber’s eyes was deep, deeper than a single mistake. Risu’s instincts – of self-defense, perhaps – told her she was staring down resentment not fifteen minutes but thousands of years old, and the clot in her throat kept growing. Still grasping for a coherent thought, her panicked mind strayed off to her left hand. If Saber went over the edge, would she have to use a Command Spell? And more importantly, could she?  
  
< _Cross me and the ground devour you, River of Tuonela take you,_  
_Roll aside the bloody boulder, Raise my nature from the nether,_  
_Ground wise woman’s bones into dust, Keep your ghost trapped down in the crust,_  
_Never to see halls of Mana, Never to face dear ancestors,_  
_Before my own judgment is done, My own sentence executed __– >_  
  
Saber had stopped speaking Japanese. He was chanting in a language that Risu didn’t understand, that might not have been a language at all, yet somehow its meaning rang loud and clear in her ears. As his song continued, furious yet never breaking tempo, she could see no signs of any kind of magecraft she recognized – no tools, no symbols, not even any shining lights – but she still felt its presence down to her soul. The room, perhaps the very space around her seemed to be warping, bending, spinning like clay being softened before the craftsman finally shapes it to his liking. The lights didn’t just flicker, they melded together into a swirling halo of colors, brightness and enveloping darkness. Her glowing, humming pendant joined in the cacophony. The floor beneath her seemed to give way, like a hungry swamp starting to swallow her whole. Yet she couldn’t think, couldn’t move, and least of all speak. The only thing in the world that she still understood was Saber’s unending stream of words.  
Her chair finally fell over. She covered her eyes and collected all her willpower, all her own frustration, into one word, one garbled, stuttered word:  
** “STOP!!”**  
One side of the triangle on her hand briefly glowed red and vanished. Saber stopped abruptly mid-sentence, and the moment he did so, the room returned to normal like it had never changed at all. A terrible silence fell over the scene, broken only by the muffled panting of Risu on the floor.  
For several seconds, Saber didn’t move or say a thing, simply stayed there hunched over the table. Finally, he straightened up and turned his back on her.  
_ “…Perkele!”_  
Saber vanished. As Risu pulled herself up to her feet, bracing against the table, she could only think that she might be in a bit over her head after all.


	2. Chapter 2

Risu’s mirror alerted her that Saber had left the area. Well, at least the wards seemed to be working. As she gathered her thoughts, she was only glad to have him away for a while, but a bigger concern had already occurred to her. She knew there was another Servant around who could come and go without tripping the alarm, get within a couple meters without either Master or Servant noticing, and who also knew where she lived. The mysterious gunman hadn’t _seemed _like an immediate threat, but she would’ve been going against her own rules to take that at face value.  
Thus the only factual conclusion was that without Saber around, she could be killed at any minute.  
That thought was clear and rational, as Risu liked to imagine all her thoughts were, but that didn’t make it any more reassuring. It was the first time in her life that she’d had to fear such a thing, but perhaps that helped make it more abstract. She resolved not to fall into despair, but instead forgot all her exhaustion, postponed lunch and got to work with renewed vigor. She set up a second ring of wards around the cabin and even a few inside it, reasoning that the gunman probably needed to reveal himself before striking. She filled her pockets with materials. She left a familiar in every room, planning to be ready wherever an attack might come.  
As she ran frantically back and forth, a voice in the back of her head told her she was being paranoid. She silenced it with a beloved family motto: Well-founded paranoia is just foresight.  
The part after she ran out well-founded things to do, however, was the worst. While she had faith in her defenses, they also made her a prisoner in her own cabin. Saber probably would’ve laughed at her if he were there. She could’ve summoned him at any time with a Command Spell, but… she decided against it. If he were still angry, he could either attack her or just run away again. And even in the best-case scenario, she’d already wasted one back there. A novice mistake that every armchair Master in the world would’ve mocked. That made the relative value of her last two even greater.  
She spent most of the day sitting with her back against a wall and mirror firmly in hand, whether it meant scouring Saber’s profile or just staring at all her sensors. Nothing happened. Eventually she had no choice but to go to sleep. Almost against her own wishes, she was out the moment her head hit the pillow.

_ “Mother, go and wash my armor, take my sword down from the gallery. I’m going to cold Pohjola, find a warmer wife than this one.”_  
Risu was the one speaking, but the words weren’t hers. She couldn’t tell where she was; the only thing in focus was whatever she was _supposed _to focus on. A beautiful woman appeared from the shadows and latched onto her arm. To be more precise, Risu _felt_ she was beautiful, but what she actually saw where her face should’ve been was a featureless void. “No, don’t do it, my beloved! Your time out at war is over! You’ve already stolen one wife, carried off a faithful maiden!”  
Risu shook her off. The arm wasn’t hers either. _“There is no faith in this household, no maiden up in my chambers. You have gone and run the village, gone off feasting soon as I left. Our solemn oath is long broken; one betrayal begs another.“_  
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the shape of a second, older woman spectating the scene from a balcony, but suddenly Risu’s body turned around and walked away with legs that weren’t hers. Behind her, the beautiful woman fell to her knees and sobbed, sobbed loudly and deeply.  
“Ahti! I have seen you perish!”

Risu was snapped awake by the mirror pinging on the nightstand next to her. She immediately threw aside her blanket and took a closer look. The wards had detected a Servant, but there was nothing on the visual feed. On a second thought, however, being detected meant it actually wasn’t the gunman. Thus, the alarm only served to give her some warning before Saber materialized in the living room.  
“The other Master still eludes me,” he said matter-of-factly.  
Risu, having hastily thrown on some clothes and sat on the couch like she’d been there all along, blinked a few times. That wasn’t exactly what she’d expected his first words to be.  
“…Uh-huh?”  
“What you call magecraft is younger than my time, much too different and much too weak for me to even recognize. I could walk right through their backyard and not even feel tickled.”  
“They’d notice you, though. Sounds like you need me after all. It’s also bad for you if I happen to get killed.”  
Saber’s expression didn’t change, but he stayed quiet for a moment. “The sooner I get my vengeance, the sooner I can forget it.”  
“After all I said about staying on the defensive, I can’t help but agree that we need to do more scouting. More than defenses, we need information, and there’s only one way to get that right now. And against a Servant like that, the best defense really might be a good offense.”  
Saber struck his hands together. “Splendid! Well said! Then, we ride out at dawn!”  
Risu looked at the clock. It was hard to tell since it was still dark outside, but it was already past 8 o’clock. That’s the Arctic Circle for you. “…No, just let me get ready and we can go.”  
Saber grinned, shrugged and headed for the door. He really seemed to be back to his usual self like nothing had happened, a thought that actually frustrated Risu more than a little.  
“Oh, but Saber?” she called out. He stopped and turned his head. “Don’t you ever use Rune Singing on me again.”  
His smile disappeared. He kept walking and shut the door behind him a little too hard.

They ‘rode out’ in Risu’s rented car. Saber offered or more like threatened to conjure a horse-drawn sled, but she obviously preferred a low profile. Saber had the Riding skill, so supposedly he could’ve driven the car as well, but Risu somehow didn’t like that idea either. She took the wheel, already quite adjusted to driving on the right side of the road – as much as she was to driving in general, anyway. Saber sat shotgun, mostly slumped against the window like a disappointed child, and watched the trees passing by.  
After a couple kilometers of driving up and down the hilly country road in complete silence, Risu just couldn’t take it anymore. “Okay, we need to talk.”  
“Always with you foreigners. Something wrong with a moment of peace?”  
“No, not that. We need to establish some rules as Master and Servant.”  
Saber let out a deep sigh. He clearly would’ve preferred not to have this conversation.  
Risu continued: “You’re right. Okay? I shouldn’t act like I know better than you. But I, either as a Master or just as a person, absolutely can’t have you flipping out on me like that. You’ve made your point. I see that you could probably kill me without even touching me, thanks. But even if that’s not what you were trying to do, you can’t just… well.” Just thinking back on that brief sensation shook her to her core.  
“Singing is a dangerous art, wielding power with just your words. Believe me, I wasn’t actually trying. People in this age just can’t take a little scolding. Back in my day, that kind of magic was all around,” Saber mumbled.  
The word ‘magic’ made Risu twitch a bit, like any modern magus. Even if he’d been granted fluency in Japanese, she could only wonder how far Saber’s knowledge of the correct terminology actually went. Indeed, in this day and age, 'magic' was the stuff of legends. “Understood. If you can’t even talk to people safely, then I guess you should just be quiet.”  
Saber was quiet.  
Risu’s turn to sigh. “Honestly. I signed up to be a Master, not a mother.”  
That really seemed to amuse him, making him break into another of his full-bellied laughing fits. It was quite contagious, though, and Risu couldn’t help but smile a bit too. At least the mood had been lifted a bit.  
“You, young lady, can’t hold a candle to my mother. Old Mother Saarelainen, now there was someone the whole country feared! I tell you, when that woman walked, mountains moved to dodge her anger.”  
Risu’s mind wandered for a second, off to the old woman she’d seen. A vision flashed before her eyes, almost making the front right tire dip into the ditch before she collected herself. “I had a dream last night.”  
“Hmm?”  
“One of yours. Thought you should know. I’ve read that something like that can happen with the link between Master and Servant, but…”  
She glanced at Saber. He was gazing out the window again, but she felt as if the look in his eyes had transformed from that of a rebellious teen into that of an old man who’d already seen more than enough. A phantom who’d already lived and died, moved thousands of years out of his time.  
“…Saber. What do you want from this war?”  
He visibly perked up and seemed to literally shake the gloom off his shoulders. Now this was a topic he was happy to talk about. “A wife, of course! Fair and faithful, worthy of my love and affection.”  
Risu gave him a quizzical look. “You couldn’t just do that in life? What does a wife even mean for a Heroic Spirit?”  
He shrugged and smiled like an idiot. “I’ll let the Grail figure that out after I win.”  
She rolled her eyes and concentrated on driving.

She parked by the street in central Sariola village. Saber spat on the ground when he first heard the name. “Another name for Pohjola,” he said.  
“What’s so bad about this Pohjola place, anyway?”  
“The cold and frozen root of all evil, that’s what. A lot of pretty ladies, though. Back in the day.”  
It was just a name, though. The modern Sariola was a tourist town with a population of a a couple thousand at most whose fortunes rose and fell depending on the ski center. Outside the busy season, in addition to the lack of tourists, its population actually dropped even further as the locals themselves had to move and find work elsewhere. At the moment, the street seemed all but deserted, with only a few lone stragglers making their way down the street. Risu took a moment to survey her surroundings.  
“Alas, young lady,” sang Saber. ”I thought we were going searching, but you seem to already have a destination in mind.”  
“I’ve done my research,” she smiled and tapped the side of her head. “This being a somewhat special Grail War, the Holy Church isn’t here to keep tabs on things. I don’t think they’re even active in this region.” She saw something resembling a church building, but as far as she knew, it was some manner of Lutheran and very much not affiliated with any underground Catholic sect. Unless the conspiracies went way deeper than she cared to consider, anyway. “However, the invitation that I got was sent by someone from the Edelfelt family. As it happens, I checked and found that there’s precisely one Edelfelt living in this town… and I know exactly where to find them.  
“Also, stop calling me ‘young lady’. If you refuse to call me Master, then just say Risu.”  
Saber stroked his chin and chuckled. “Risu… A strange name, but very well. But what happened to not using names? Will you finally use mine as well?”  
“You’re different. I could give everyone my full name and family tree and they still wouldn’t recognize me,” she answered with a bitter smirk. Saber got a weirdly thoughtful look on his face again. She wasn’t sure how to feel when he did that. “Anyway, our target is just a bit this way.”  
Down the road was a small, unassuming restaurant named simply _Poro_. Risu confirmed with her lens that there wasn’t any magecraft she could see, nor did she feel a barrier as she opened the door and stepped inside – not that this was absolute proof, as her own wards didn’t cause a tangible sensation either due to being based on hidden sensors rather than a field of energy. The modest establishment seemed like a homely mix of a café, deli, restaurant and pub – the sort of place that served all sorts of things depending on the time of day. However, as it was currently after breakfast but before lunch, it was devoid of even any locals.  
Having never really left Japan in her life, Risu found it strange not to be greeted as soon as she entered. Even when she approached the counter, the woman sitting and reading a newspaper behind it only afforded a single curt nod for her and Saber to share, which she was quite sure would be considered rude even by local standards. Risu stopped a safe distance away but Saber, clearly happy to be here, just kept walking. Raising his hand in greeting, he called out in smooth modern Finnish:  
_ < Hey there! I’ll take a beer, thank you very much. >  
< Sure. Can I see your ID? >  
< Huh? >_  
With the same disinterested look on her face, the woman rolled up her newspaper and tapped a sign on the wall. It said in several languages: “All customers who look under 30 will be checked.”  
_ < What nonsense is this!? >  
_ “What nonsense is this?” Risu asked in Japanese. “What are you doing?”  
“This imperious wench refuses to get me a drink!” Saber yelped and pointed at her, sounding almost more distressed than angry. The imperious wench got the first hint of a smile on her face.  
“That’s not the point!” Risu angrily stomped over to Saber. “Did you forget what we’re here for? She could be an enemy!”  
“Oh, please. I’d recognize a Master if I saw one.”  
Risu looked through her lens again. “True… I’m not sensing a link coming from her.”  
“English?” the wench interrupted them.  
“Y… Yes?” Risu stuttered in response.  
“Are you Master and Servant?” Her English, much like Risu’s, was decent enough but noticeably accented.  
“Ah, so you get it after all!” Saber happily exclaimed. He of all people was the only one in the room with absolutely no accent in any language he spoke.  
Risu’s eyes narrowed. “Elina Edelfelt?”  
“Yeah, that’s me. Welcome to _Poro_, how can I help you?”  
A woman in her forties, dressed in a square pattern shirt and blue jeans, Elina Edelfelt looked at least as ordinary as her little restaurant. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was hanging open, and the only unusual thing about her was that her eyes were the same shining color. If Risu wasn’t specifically here to look for her, she never would’ve thought to connect her to one of the more prominent magus lineages in Europe, one that had even participated in the Third Holy Grail War in Fuyuki almost a hundred years prior.  
“Show me your hands,” Risu demanded, still scowling.  
The amused Elina threw up both her hands, turning them around for Risu to see. No Command Spells. “Look, I’m not a magus. Edelfelt is just a surname.”  
“But you know what I’m talking about.”  
Smiling mischievously, Elina leaned over the counter. “You’re not the first Master to come here. You’re looking for my cousin.”  
Risu’s hand twitched and reflexively dove into her pocket. Saber put a hand on her shoulder as if to tell her to relax. “What is the matter with you? Isn’t this exactly what we’re here for?” he asked in Japanese.  
She groaned, loosened up a bit and continued in English: “Then do you know where they are?”  
“Nope. I had nothing to do with this, but he was kind enough to drop in and give me a heads-up. He knew someone would come asking. I mean, it’s not a very big place.”  
“Quite a coincidence that he happened to have a cousin living right on top of the leyline.”  
Elina shrugged.  
“What _can _you tell us? His name?” Risu sighed. She was crossing her arms, tapping her foot and overall running out of patience.  
Elina smiled a catlike smile and leaned back in her chair. “His name’s Karling. Not that a lot of people other than magi call him that, and we and the main line you’ve probably heard of are like a… cousin-of-a-cousin situation. Other than that, I probably can’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”  
Anything she didn’t already know, huh.  
“Speaking of which, I don’t think I caught _your_ name?”

Despite Risu’s best interrogation, which may not be saying much, she indeed didn’t get anything useful out of Elina. Neither did Saber, as even Risu couldn’t manage to get a beer from her “under reason to suspect that she’d be handing it to a minor”. Elina may have openly admitted that she knew what the Grail War was and that she’d seen some other Masters, yet still maintained a façade of neutrality. Risu was unconvinced, but also unwilling to press much further at the moment. Even after a bit of snooping around, she found absolutely no traces of magecraft ever having been used in the vicinity of that restaurant, so she was willing to believe that Elina wasn’t an active participant. She wasn’t, however, dumb enough to think that she was there totally on accident, running a diner in the same little hamlet.  
“Where to?” Saber asked, leaning on the car.  
“How should I know?” grumbled Risu, standing next to him and munching on a fried panini. “We didn’t find out squat, besides the guy’s name. And that there are at least a couple Masters around, I guess. Man, this unofficial Grail War sucks.”  
“Yes, about that. I’ve been graciously gifted with knowledge of the war and the Grail themselves, but I have no idea what’s going on here. Unlike you, apparently. And, no offense, you don’t exactly seem like a trained Master either. You already asked me what I want from this, and apparently went digging in my head as well. Mind explaining your side of the story… Risu?”  
Risu chewed quietly for a moment. After swallowing, she finally answered, avoiding Saber’s gaze: “I’ll tell you later when we get back to the cabin. Come on. Let’s at least walk around some more.”

The Aragata had never been what one would consider an especially grand or noble lineage of magi. Of course, as magecraft tends to both demand and bring in a lot of resources, they’d still been aristocrats with a comfortable position on the lower rungs of the shogunate bureaucracy. The money helped them practice their craft, and said craft inevitably helped them along on their careers. By being just successful enough to live in comfort, they managed to miss the spoils but also the dangers of being a truly “great” family.  
However, even as the living space of magecraft was shrinking in general, the Aragata family seemingly sealed its own doom by picking the wrong side in the conflict around the Meiji Restoration and staying loyal to the shogun. When the dust settled, magical and political rivals alike had taken advantage and marginalized them every way they could. It was a small miracle that they came out as well as they did, but even if they were allowed to maintain some shadow of their former prosperity, their money and power was permanently lost.  
They still lived in a rather nice house and all, a traditional building with centuries of history, but as of the new millennium, large parts of it had already fallen into serious disrepair. They’d devoted all they had to just making sure their lineage was allowed to continue. The current head of the family, Aragata Kousaburo, and his wife Kanade were out on important, very secretive Mage’s Association business when the mysterious letter arrived at the decaying manor. Marked with nothing but the Edelfelt seal yet mixed in with the regular mail, the envelope only contained a technically detailed yet otherwise nebulous explanation of why and how a Holy Grail War without the Association or the Church’s supervision would be possible in a given place at a given time. The invitation was only implicit, but obvious. Not unlike being sent free tickets to a cruise leaving in one month’s time.  
Of course, just like a sudden prize for a competition you hadn’t entered, there were certain risks that anyone taking the invitation had to acknowledge.  
  
“I’m the heir to the Aragata family and Magic Crest, but I’ve always had trouble with my circuits. They say I can produce a lot of energy, but I just can’t channel it very well outside special equipment. I’m lucky that our family’s specialty is in this Looking Glass magecraft, but…”  
“So all those things are from your family’s toybox?”  
Risu nodded. She hadn’t raised her eyes from the floor for a while. She was sitting in the same old armchair and Saber on the couch, but for once it looked like he was actually sitting properly and listening with rapt attention. The sun was starting to set outside, highlighting just how painfully short every day seemed to be.  
“If I lose here, we’re even more ruined. I definitely have a lot of childish reasons to want to fight in this war. But I also need to win for my family. If I could get better circuits… or even just more money… I figured…”  
Saber raised his eyes to the ceiling and took a deep breath, pausing to process everything he’d heard. Not least the terms he didn’t really understand, which was a lot of them. The next time he looked at her was with that thousand-year stare and an almost rhetorical question he thought he already knew the answer to: “How long have your parents been on this trip of theirs?”  
“…About six years.”  
“Risu, Risu, Risu…”  
She rolled up tighter in her chair, hugging her knees. “Look, I know what you think. But that’s not what it is. It’s normal for magi to go on long research trips when the situation demands. I hear some kids barely see their parents. And on that note, I’m not even a kid anymore. It’s…”  
Her mirror started pinging frantically on the table across the room, and she almost did a somersault scrambling over to get it. She swiped back and forth to check what was going on. “Two people from the northeast!” She tried scrying through the wards, but all she could see was a quickly moving black blot already too far for her to make out. Clearly there was a little design flaw there. “That’s the middle of the woods! It’s got to be enemies!”  
By the time she turned around to look at Saber, he had already put on his armor and fur cape and was bouncing over to her, excitedly pounding his fist into his palm. “Ah ha! Finally a fight! But, pray tell, assuming it’s not that bastard from yesterday, how did they find us?”  
“I assume they followed us from the village somehow. What matters now is that we use the wards to our advantage. We’ll know when they get close to the cabin, and we’ll know exactly –”  
“Out of the way!”  
Saber threw her to the floor just as a shower of splinters and glass erupted into the room. With a resounding crash, something had smashed through the northeastern window, taking out a good chunk of the surrounding wood with it before burying itself in the opposite wall.  
“Arrows!?” yelped Risu.  
The first thing they both noticed was that the projectile wasn’t in fact an arrow, but an ornate black-and-silver spearhead attached to a long, long shaft that extended through the hole it’d come from. The second thing they noticed was that it had narrowly missed Saber, but managed to pierce and get tangled with his cape.  
“Oh, for the love of…”  
As forcefully as it had entered, the spear shaft retracted, yanking Saber along and banging his head into the wall on the way out. Risu could only run over to the hole and watch helplessly as her cursing, flailing Servant rapidly disappeared deeper into the woods.  
In only a few seconds, Saber had already been pulled out of sight and earshot of the cabin. He finally slipped free and rolled through the snow, transitioning smoothly into a crouching stance with his hand on his hilt, ready to counter the next blow. When he looked up, though, he was left staring in disbelief at a familiar face.  
“…Tiera!?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had the first three chapters written ahead of time. Update rate will slow down from here.

“…Tiera!?”  
“…Ahti?”  
Holding the spear that had hooked onto Saber was a man about his height and age. His hair was a ruffled mess of silvery white, in opposition to Saber’s silky red and gold. His bright green eyes were contrasted by what looked like black, watery streaks running down his cheeks. His light metal armor and most of his imposing, barbed spear were dyed in those same hues of silver and black.  
Saber leapt from his crouching position and charged at the man, but without drawing his sword. He grabbed his free hand, put an arm around his shoulder and pulled him into a warm embrace. The spearman, reading his intentions, didn’t even move to dodge or counterattack but simply returned the gesture. They stood there, holding each other, and spoke in a language that hadn’t been spoken in these woods for thousands of years.  
_ < Tiera, brother, old companion! Never did I think I’d see you, meet you in these dark conditions! >_  
_ < I missed you too, Ahti. To the point that is possible for the likes of us. >_  
_ < When did you arrive? >_  
_ < Just the other day. I must say, it’s been quite busy. >_  
“What nonsense is this!?”  
Saber looked over his friend’s shoulder. Peeking from behind a tree was the face of a man, not especially old but covered in a short, dark, scraggly beard. He stepped out to reveal that he was wearing a long jacket that almost had the appearance of a robe. To an experienced eye like Ahti’s, though, the jacket failed to hide the fact that the man was quite wiry and thin, perhaps even a little sickly.  
“Lancer, what’s going on!? Did he cast something on you!?”  
Lancer sighed, patted Saber on the back and took a step away from him. “Just an old acquaintance,” he answered in English.  
Saber had a bitter grin on his face. “Your aim with that stick has gotten even better to pull me in like that, my friend.”  
“No, not really. You’re just that clumsy.”  
Both Servants laughed. Lancer’s Master, however, was moving on from confusion to straight anger. “Lancer, do you understand what you’re doing!?”  
_ “Sabeeeer!”_  
They heard shouting from the direction of the cabin. Soon Risu came into view, huffing and panting up the slope. Saber just stood there with a smile on his face and gestured towards Lancer.  
“Ah, great timing! Meet Tiera, my beloved brother in arms! Hoarfrost, son of Niera, Tiera the Eternal! We go way back, one might say. I’m sure he’s very sorry for wrecking your dwelling, too.”  
“Your… brother in arms?” Risu panted, having finally reached them and now leaning on a tree to catch her breath. The man Saber was pointing at had a lot of the same ethereal youth as him, but his presence was somehow more restrained, if not a bit melancholy.  
“Pleasure to meet you. I take it you’re Ahti’s Master,” he said in Japanese.  
“Speak English, dammit!” yelled his own from behind him. “I don’t care if you know each other! You’re here to fight, not talk!”  
Tiera sighed. It was more a tired sigh than sad or anything. “He’s right, Ahti. I’m delighted to meet you here, but as cruel fate would have it, we seem to be on opposite sides.” He pointed his spear at Saber. “Needless to say, no hard feelings.”  
Saber scoffed. He seemed disappointed, but not in disagreement. He smiled and drew his dazzling sword, respectfully crossing blades with Lancer.  
“Excuse me!” Risu got a word in. “You said you know each other? Are you really sure you’re fine fighting just like that? Just showing up and starting without… further ado?”  
“What do you mean?” asked Saber. “Is that not how this works? Both Masters and Servants are only here for the Grail, all else be damned? Besides, for us, there’s no such thing as death. We’ve already lived our share and died, and defeat, even if shameful, only means a return to the Throne of Heroes.”  
Risu, who’d apparently viewed the whole idea of fighting in the abstract, was a bit shocked by this whole chain of events. She wasn’t sure if she should think of Saber’s attitude as solemn or carefree. Lancer’s Master, however, seemed to enthusiastically agree.  
“That’s right! Servants are mere familiars to fight for their Masters! We summon you, and in return, you owe your very existence to us!”  
“I suggest you be quiet before I change my mind,” said Lancer, who walked farther away from Saber and gave his spear a spin. “Just because I’ll fight doesn’t mean I want to hear you yapping about it. If there is no death or me, what’s stopping me from getting rid of you if you bother me enough?”  
Lancer looked over his shoulder and gave his Master a stone-faced glare, met with a disturbed shiver. Risu couldn’t help but dislike that thought as well.  
Saber braced himself, throwing his sword from hand to hand in anticipation. “I suggest you take a step back and keep your head down. You’re about to see what a battle between true heroes looks like.”  
Risu nodded and did as ordered, both Masters giving their Servants some space to work with. She couldn’t completely ignore the bearded man, though. He was presumably a magus, which meant that he could have some tricks up his sleeve as well. Taking cover behind a large tree and seeing him do the same, she pulled out her mirror.  
  
The sun was almost down. Only a dim glow of orange lingered on the snowy landscape, giving way to the bluish darkness of a winter’s night. Saber and Lancer stood on opposite sides of a clearing and held up their weapons, measuring each other’s form and focus. For a moment, the only sounds in the frozen forest were those of a distant crow and the snow beneath Risu’s awkwardly shuffling feet. Finally that silence was broken when, without a word nor any other warning, Saber dashed forward and steel rang against steel.  
The clash was followed by another. And another. Right off the bat, the two warriors were going at it with vigor, and to Risu it looked like there wasn’t a shred of superfluous movement in their swings. Not that she could actually see many of them, only vaguely register that a weapon had moved and been parried once again. She wasn’t much of a fighter to begin with, but were she there in Saber’s place, she knew that she’d be dead instantly. The way both men were taking the hits, it could’ve seemed like there wasn’t that much power behind them, but every now and then a glancing blow was redirected to the side and blew up a cloud of snow, went halfway through a thick tree or left a long gouge in the earth. Just the noise made by the battle sounded like a construction site at work.  
Knowing that they were old friends explained a lot, too, since they seemed to be intimately familiar with each other’s every move. Lancer’s telescopic spear switched effortlessly between parrying Saber’s sword, extending to try and hit him, and shrinking down again when Saber dodged and tried to close the distance. Saber was no worse, knowing exactly how Lancer’s weapon worked and taking great care to never let it point directly at him for more than a split second. Lancer seemed to have a certain advantage from being able to control the distance between them, but that also kept himself on the defense. After a good while of wordlessly trading blows, neither side had yet to land a scratch.  
Risu was spectating the whole match through her mirror. Two of her familiars were floating above and around the arena: palm-sized solid glass spheres transmitting a live feed while staying out of harm’s way. One of them had snuck near the enemy Master, showing him nervously peeking from behind a tree and clearly not quite sure what to do, while the other kept an eye on the combatants and let Risu keep her head down. The fact that the rapidly moving men had stayed inside their impromptu fighting ring was amazing in itself, and Risu was sure they were doing it on purpose.  
The enemy Master seemed to agree. “Lancer, this is going nowhere! Use your Noble Phantasm!”  
Lancer didn’t take a break from fighting while he answered: “With all due respect, his own may very well be the worst possible match against mine.”  
“Do it! Don’t make me waste a spell on you!”  
Lancer sighed, gave Saber a meaningful glance and disengaged. He raised his spear above his head with both hands and spoke with an echoing voice:  
**_ “Keiho Keskinkertahinen!”_**  
  
Nothing seemed to happen at first, but when Lancer next swung his weapon, Risu had just barely enough time to react. Until now, only the spear’s shaft had been shrinking and extending in length while the rest of it remained normal, albeit a bit unusual in design. What now came rumbling towards her was a whole different animal. One, in the blink of an eye, the shaft suddenly had the thickness of a small tree; two, the spear _head _was a ship-sized hunk of steel several times the length of its shaft, giving it proportions more similar to a sword. A massive sword at least fifty meters in length.  
Lancer swung his behemoth of a weapon in a horizontal arc, indiscriminately cutting through every single tree and landform in the surrounding area apart from a small safe sector where his Master was. Risu had to duck to save herself from being sliced in half, and then immediately dive to the side to avoid being crushed by the tree she’d been hiding behind. In an instant the forest had become a chaos of flying wood, snow and rubble, but the duel was ongoing. Still dizzy, Risu looked up to see that Saber had dodged by jumping high into the air. Lancer wasted no time, however, swiftly bringing his weapon around to swing it downward on the still airborne Saber, who had nowhere to dodge.  
Saber managed to use his sword to block the spear from cutting into his flesh, but that did nothing to reduce the momentum behind it. The still accelerating meteor on a stick took him along for the ride. He barely had time to yell out some inaudible but surely choice words before it rammed him into the ground with a truly earth-shattering impact that even threw Risu, a decent distance away, tumbling face-first into the snow again.  
Lancer retracted his spear. There was so much debris in the air that even he had to wait for it to clear before he could see the aftermath. Thoroughly shaken, stirred and panicked, Risu found a new stump to hide behind and quickly sent one of her familiars to check on Saber. The mark left in the terrain by Lancer’s Noble Phantasm was something between a fissure and what she could only describe as an elongated crater. However, as the dust began to settle, where she was scared to find Saber’s sliced or mangled body, she found… nothing. Not until an arm burst from underground, followed by another, and finally the rest of Saber pulling himself up more or less intact. Coughing and spitting out dirt, he shakily rose up to his legs, wiped some blood off his face and smiled. For the first time, Risu was truly relieved to see that punchable smirk on his face.  
“Damn, Tiera! That one felt like you’d been waiting to do it for a while now!”  
Lancer shrugged and shook his head. “I only do as I must. But I expect the same from you. You yourself just showed why there’s no point in going easy on a rune singer.”  
Saber was clearly injured, maybe some broken bones here and there – whatever that meant for a Servant – but being swallowed by the ground had saved him from bearing the full brunt of Lancer’s attack. He straightened his back, steadied his breath and grasped his weapon, ready to go again.  
“Risu! Risu, I know you’re in here!” he yelled and turned his head, trying to find her. He was surprised by the glass sphere that flew over and hovered in front of his face, but quickly realized what it was and took it in stride. He talked to the sphere like he was looking right at Risu. “Watch, young lady! Watch and listen closely! Let me show you there’s nothing childish about your ambitions!”  
The sphere floated off to the side. Saber took a fighting stance and held his sword steady in front of him. Before he even did anything, Risu could feel a powerful presence, like a ripple in the air. There was fire in his eyes. Then he began to sing.  
  
In the Age of the Gods, when a rune singer sang, there was no need to raise their voice. Whatever they had to say, the mere power behind their words carried them far and wide, across time and space and into the listener’s soul. When a rune singer sang, the world stopped to listen. When a rune singer sang, the world did as it was told. Even thousands of years later, filtered by the restrictions of the Holy Grail, when a rune singer sang, lesser beings felt it in their bones.  
  
< _Even if my clan is humble, My old homestead low and lacking,_  
_I still have my fiery blade, My glistening saber-iron. >_  
  
Risu could hear Lancer’s Master yelling something at him, but she was too fixated on Saber to really hear what it was. The wind around them was picking up. Lancer stood still, his spear firmly planted in the ground, and listened as well.  
  
< _Its line is far greater than mine, Its descent quite high and noble:_  
_Forged down in the halls of the earth, Polished by the gods in heaven._  
_ I will elevate my family, Enlarge my entire bloodline,_  
_ With this shimmering saber-iron — >_  
  
“LANCER! MOVE!”  
  
_ < My dazzling sword, **Tuliterä!** >_  
  
Like an old gas stove flickering to life, Saber’s sword let out a few solitary sparks before finally blazing up in earnest. The burst of hot air was enough to make Risu cover her face. It would’ve felt misleading to say the sword was on “on fire”. It was more like the blade was surrounded by an intense, violent jet of flame blasting out of the crossguard like an exhaust from a launching rocket. The flame itself looked like you could cut something with it. What snow was still left around Saber immediately melted and started to evaporate.  
That was it, though. There was no sign of the devastating attack that Lancer’s Master, taking cover on the ground, had clearly been expecting. After a moment of baffled silence and nothing but Saber standing there looking proud of himself, blazing sword in hand, the Master finally pushed himself upright and scoffed.  
“That’s it? That’s your Noble Phantasm? I’m almost disappointed!”  
“Stop embarrassing yourself,” Lancer said and lifted his spear, clearly not referring to Saber. “Ahti? Shall we?”  
Saber took a few casual steps forward. “Been a while since I really got to sing.”  
Lancer charged at him, and he charged up to meet him. It was immediately clear that there was something very different about Round 2. Lancer’s _Keiho Keskinkertahinen _was still growing and extending at will, but he wasn’t even trying to use the destructive power it’d displayed mere moments ago. Saber’s _Tuliterä_ on the other hand was gliding effortlessly through everything it met and sending out waves of heat on every swing. It was almost like the sun had come back up and was now whirling around the battlefield in a dizzying flurry of light.  
Quite critically, however, it wasn’t reaching Lancer. In fact, compared to the start of the battle, their weapons didn’t clash even once. Risu soon realized that Saber was going all out on the offensive while Lancer was doing all he could just to avoid the flame getting anywhere near him or his spear. Saber’s injuries were slowing him down a bit, but just like Lancer himself had warned, he was unable to do a thing against a weapon he couldn’t touch.  
Of course, Risu had already read Saber’s file and known about his Noble Phantasm.  


> Noble Phantasm: **Tuliterä – Shimmering Saber-Iron.** Anti-Unit, Rank A+. While lacking in mass destructive power, once activated, its blazing blade infused with divine blessings and old magic can cut clean through any weapon or material of a lower pedigree. This includes Noble Phantasms.

  


It was like Risu was just now remembering that she was a Master at all, having spent the whole fight running and hiding while Saber did all the work. To be fair, the same could be said of her enemy, but at least that idiot could put in the effort to heckle a bit. She on the other hand felt pretty preoccupied just staying alive. Lancer may not have been swinging his Noble Phantasm around anymore, but the occasional tongue of flame flying past her felt like a pretty good reason to stay down in her hidey hole anyway.  
Lancer may have felt the same, hopping around the field of fallen trees in a frantic effort to out-maneuver Saber and get past his weapon somehow. Saber looked like he was having the time of his life, though.  
“A man’s ambition given shape! The blade that will shape a lineage! Forged down in the halls of the earth, polished by the gods in heaven!”  
Lancer saw an opening and swiped at Saber’s feet, trying to knock him off balance. However, he spun to the side and forced Lancer to back down lest he lose his head. If the steel didn’t get him, the flames would. It seemed that in a closely-matched melee like this, a simple but superior blade was far preferable to a grandiose Anti-Army weapon like his, which he couldn’t even use without it getting destroyed on the spot.  
With Saber’s Noble Phantasm countering Lancer’s but both men too good to actually get hit, it seemed like the battle had just hit another stalemate. This time it wasn’t even punctuated by their weapons striking each other, only the patch of former forest around them getting increasingly barren and burnt.  
It felt like an eternity passed before Saber finally got his very first hit of the day. After blasting away a rock that Lancer was standing on, he finally landed a shallow cut on his abdomen that burnt the flesh around it and made even a hardened hero yelp and groan in agony. Holding his wound, Lancer took a step back, and Saber seemed to grant him a brief reprieve. From the look on his face, he didn’t seem too comfortable watching this either.  
Apparently at the same time, both Masters finally decided to shape up and get involved. Lancer’s got out of his hiding place, raised his left hand with two Command Seals on it and started: “Lancer, I command you! Ki—"  
He was interrupted by a flying mass of glass impacting the side of his head at high velocity. With a sickening _THUNK_, he was down for the count. If anything, the fact that Lancer didn’t start vanishing was the only proof that his Master was still breathing. He turned to look at the unconscious heap with an almost disinterested sigh.  
“Apologies, Ahti, but I think we must retire for the day.”  
“…Agreed.”  
Saber lowered his blade and the flame went out with a whoosh. They shared a long, somber look before Lancer finally walked over to his Master. After inspecting him for a moment, he lifted him up and threw him on the back of a pitch-black, smoke-like steed that materialized before him. He himself hopped up in the saddle and grabbed the similarly wispy reins.  
“See you, Tiera,” Saber smiled. Lancer answered with a nod before riding out into the distance, pinging on Risu’s mirror as he left the area. After a moment, she finally stood up and approached Saber.  
“Risu,” Saber said without looking at her.  
“Yes?”  
“Didn’t I tell you not to intervene when I’m fighting?” There was no real feeling in his words.  
“…I’m not sure it was really a fight at that point.”  
Saber granted her an amused scoff, slid his sword into its scabbard and started walking towards the cabin.

Risu admired the results of Saber’s handiwork. Looking at the wall, there was no sign that it had ever been attacked, not a shard nor a splinter astray. Glass and wood had both been restored to perfection.  
“Didn’t take you for a carpenter,” she said.  
“Oh, commanding a bit of dead matter is nothing for a rune singer! My old mother could order the sun and moon right down from the sky!” Saber laughed, spreading his hands in the air.  
He sure liked talking about his mother. “…You sure you’re not a demigod?”  
Saber laughed, stomped inside and got one of the beers Risu had gracefully bought from the grocery store.

> Noble Phantasm:** Keiho Keskinkertahinen – Not a Large Spear Nor a Small One. **Anti-Army, Rank B. In regular use, Tiera’s spear can shrink and extend freely, but once activated, its proportions can grow arbitrarily large with the weight and power to match. It’s a blunt destructive instrument, but a versatile one with modest energy upkeep allowing it to stay active for constant use.

> Skill: **Rune Singing. **Rank B. Even though it’s actually magic from the Age of the Gods, as a Saber-class Heroic Spirit, Lemminkäinen’s is weakened and lacking in direct combat power. At higher ranks, Rune Singing allows advanced spells like shapeshifting and more combat applications. He can theoretically be summoned as a Caster with higher Rune Singing and slightly lower combat skills, but he identifies more as a warrior. All users can also talk to animals and spirits.


End file.
